Quill pig is another name for a porcupine. Porcupines are unattractive and unpopular, but, as animals go, and unlike eagles, elephants, and donkeys, they are reasonably harmless good neighbors that mind their own business. Here's where we can talk about being good neighbors and why it's eternally important.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Sam and Evan

The scion of the Jellicle family –
whose cats, known as the Jellicle Cats, were immortalized in T. S.
Eliot’s book Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats
– was Evan.

Evan
had a lovely daughter named Faith, whom he loved very much. When
Faith turned eighteen, she went off to college and fell in with a
crowd that was long on adventure and short on … Well, whatever it
was, they decided that before the weather got cold they would go
skinny dipping at a local quarry and put pictures of their frolics up
on the Web.

Evan
found out about this from his next-door neighbor Wes, who
congratulated him for making the world a better place by having a
daughter so willing to share her beauty with the world. When he heard
this, Evan was furious, and for the rest of his life, every time he
would see Wes in his backyard he would lean over the fence and yell,
“You pervert! You’ve degraded my daughter! If I could, I’d lock
you up in jail and throw away the key! The hottest part of hell will
be better than you deserve!”

Meanwhile
Evan had a friend named Sam, who would often invite him over for pool
parties and barbecues. They got along very well because they had a
lot in common. One thing they had in common was portliness; another
was an intense dislike for a thin man named Moose. Now
Moose was a pretty unlikeable person. He was part of the gun culture,
and there were credible reports that people who showed up on his land
unbidden didn’t come out again.

One
day Sam decided he needed to spend some time on Moose’s land, so he
went over. Knowing that Moose wasn’t a nice guy, he went armed with
a double-barreled shotgun and kept his eyes and ears open. He
had walked
along for a while when he got
to a pond, and
he heard rustling in the
bushes nearby. He quickly took cover, listened carefully, and looked
around. There it was again – over there – branches were moving.
Sam, certain that his life was in danger and not wanting to be like
so many who had never returned, fired into the bushes with both
barrels.

The
motion in the bushes stopped. Sam crept closer and looked inside.
There he saw the corpses of Faith and another girl covered in blood.
They had apparently been swimming in the pond when they realized Sam
was coming and had taken refuge in the bushes to
get dressed.

When
Sam explained the situation to Evan, Evan sighed
and said, “Wrong place,
wrong time. Can’t be helped. You were going after Moose, and that’s
the important thing.” And
after Faith’s funeral, Evan held a party to honor Sam, toasting him
for his bravery in his pursuit of Moose.

We
know that Evan did the right thing because the Bible says so. But for
years afterward infidels who
didn’t know any better would tell their children, “If you want to
be wise, if you want to be a good neighbor, you don’t want to be an
Evan Jellicle.”